{"id":2627,"date":"2017-03-23T22:37:03","date_gmt":"2017-03-23T22:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=2627"},"modified":"2017-03-23T22:41:12","modified_gmt":"2017-03-23T22:41:12","slug":"dickerson-joins-the-porters-in-what-appears-to-be-a-mass-exodus-from-husky-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=2627","title":{"rendered":"Dickerson joins the Porters in what appears to be a mass exodus from Husky program"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Terry<\/a><\/p>\n

TERRY MOSHER<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/a>M<\/p>\n

MICHAEL PORTER JR.<\/p>\n

\"Noah<\/a><\/p>\n

NOAH DICKERSON<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The sad saga of Michael Porter Jr. \u2013 sad in that he most likely won\u2019t be on the Washington Husky basketball roster for next season \u2013 has me conflicted about the whole situation with him, his dad, Michael Porter Sr., and his two younger brothers, Jontay Porter and Coban Porter.<\/p>\n

Porter Sr. is a close friend of fired Washington basketball coach Lorenzo Romar and Romar hired his best friend this year as a well-paid assistant coach. Of course, Porter Sr. brought along his wife and two sons and they purchased a house in the Lake City area that includes Nathan Hale High School.<\/p>\n

So the three sons \u2013 Michael Jr., a senior, Jontay, a junior, and Coban, a freshman \u2013 all played for Nathan Hale, which hired former Husky great Brandon Roy to coach the team.<\/p>\n

I suspect it was all a set-up from the get-go that the Porters just happened to find a home in Lake City and that Roy, close to the Washington program and Romar, just happened to be hired as Nathan Hale\u2019s coach.<\/p>\n

So loaded with the three Porters and four other transfers, including P.J. Fuller (from Garfield), Tre\u2019Var Holland (Edmonds-Woodway), MarJon Beauchamp (Yakima) and Keegan Crosby (Bishop Blanchet), Nathan Hale went from a 3-18 record in the 2015-16 season to a 29-0 season and the state 3A championship this year.<\/p>\n

Now that Romar has been let go and Mike Hopkins, a long-time assistant at Syracuse, has been hired, a strong recruiting class \u2013 <\/sup>it has been called the second-best in-coming class in the nation \u2013 is in doubt. Both Michael Jr. and his brother Jontay have reopened their recruiting. Michael Jr. has been released by Washington from his letter-of-intent, but says Washington is still on his list of schools he might attend, and Jontay, who verbally committed to Washington, says he also now is open to other schools.<\/p>\n

One other recruit, point Guard Blake Harris also has been released from his Washington letter-of-intent and two Seattle local recruits, Daejon Davis and Jaylen Nowell, are still committed but certainly are not a sure thing to keep their commitment.<\/p>\n

The departures are not being limited to recruits, Noah Dickerson, 6-8 sophomore who was the team’s leading scorer down the stretch, and 6-9 junior Matthew Atewe, are both transferring. There may be more leaving as the new coaching staff comes in and starts over.<\/p>\n

The point I want to make, though, is that the situation with the Porters is not unusual. Fathers have been hired by schools in the past just so they will bring along their talented sons. Memphis hired Keelon Lawson three years ago and now his two older sons, K.J. and Dedric play for the Tigers.<\/p>\n

Danny Manning\u2019s father was hired at Kansas and he followed, as did Dajuan Wagner to Memphis when John Calipari was coaching there and hired his dad. There are other examples, but it\u2019s sufficient to say it happens a lot and the Porters\u2019 decision to leave \u2013 their dad has an offer to coach at Missouri where they are from \u2013 is just part of the sad game that goes on off the court.<\/p>\n

Is this off-the-court game right?<\/p>\n

Depends on whose ox is being gored. Washington is getting gored now. So if you are a Husky fan, you are probably upset. But its life, and you have to move on and hope that Hopkins is the right hire to rebuild the Washington program and make them a basketball power, which is what they should be because of its location in a hot-bed of high school basketball.<\/p>\n

So we will see. What we won\u2019t see are the Porters, probably.<\/p>\n

Speaking of basketball, I got to get ready to watch the start of the Sweet Sixteen. Hope things are going well for you.<\/p>\n

Be well pal.<\/p>\n

Be careful out there.<\/p>\n

Have a great day.<\/p>\n

You are loved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TERRY MOSHER     M MICHAEL PORTER JR. NOAH DICKERSON   The sad saga of Michael Porter Jr. \u2013 sad…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2631,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,16,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","category-top-stories","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2627"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2632,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2627\/revisions\/2632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}